
Glass_f-j^L"a- 






BookX^JP-3 






FOR THE 



CELEBRATION 



CLOSE OF THE SECOND CENTURY 



SINCE THE ESTABLISHMENT 



THURSDAY LECTURE. 



BY n: l. frothingham, 

Pastor of the First Church. 



PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE BOSTON ASSOCIATION OF 
CONGREGATIONAL MINISTERS. 



BOSTON: 

RUSSELL, ODIORNE, AND METCALF. 
1833. 



r 73 



BOSTON: 

Samuel N. Dickinson. Printer, 
52, Washington Street. 



SERMON. 



JOB iv. 15. 



THEN A SPIRIT PASSED BEFORE MY FACE. 



What is the past, but a spirit, a shade, an image, like 
that which Eliphaz the Temanite saw in his vision ? It is an 
unsubstantial, hollow form, from which the life has departed. 
We call it up as from the dead. It flits before the fancy 
like one of those dim ghosts, that peopled the under-world 
both of Grecian and Hebrew poetry, and that present 
themselves to us again in the melancholy mythology of 
the North, robed in grey mists and faint meteors ; in either 
case possessing no part of their former strength, and uttering 
their speech in the sigh of the night-wind or a whisper out of 
the dust. 

My brethren of this association seem to have assigned me 
the task of summoning forth such a shade, when they have 



bidden me go back almost to the time, when this land was 
first peopled by Christian men ; and to describe the origin 
and fortune of a Lecture, which was once thought of the 
utmost importance to the church and the state, but which we 
are left to support with thankless pains, comforted indeed by 
the sympathies of one another, but little cheered by the public 
at large. Two hundred years, — that have departed as all 
years must, but not into the utter forgetfulness, in which most 
of the generations of men lie buried, — are required to gather 
a few of their faded recollections, a few semblances of the 
great life that once thrilled through them, as if into an 
empty, air-drawn figure. We are to question it, and it is to 
admonish us. 

And if the time that has elapsed since our lecture was found- 
ed glides before us like a spirit, when brought under the wand 
of historical invocation, — what is the lecture itself, on the 
account of which I am bidden to invoke and interrogate it, 
but a shadow of what it once was, a sort of spectral imper- 
sonation of former influence and honor ? One feels as if he 
were dealing with scarcely a real subject ; as if he were asking 
of one phantom to tell him of another ; as if he were surround- 
ed but by aged recollections, and could be responded to but 
by signs and echoes. He might wish to bow his head silent- 
ly, like Saul at Endor, while the old veiled seer comes up ; 
or be ready to tremble like Job's friend in the text, as the 
indistinct vision passes by him. He will be thought reasonable 
at least, in regretting that he has not the necromantic skill of 
some, to bring the absent and forgotten before your eyes, and 
to speak to you as with a voice from the land where all past 
things are gathered darkly to their repose. For his own part, 



he has looked long and intently after what might be disclosed 
to him, but with so little success as to be almost ashamed to 
tell what he has seen. " It stood still, but he could not dis- 
cern the form thereof." 

There is an obscurity hanging over the early years of the 
Thursday Lecture — or the Fifth-day Lecture, as it was an- 
ciently called, — which it is difficult to account for, and which 
the most diligent search that I could make has been unable to 
clear away. It is well known that the institution of it is dated 
from the ordination of Mr. Cotton, just two centuries ago, as 
teacher over the church, that was then the only one, in this 
town. The testimony to this point is of the most satisfactory 
kind. Governor Winthrop tells us in his Journal, that on the 
17th of Sept. 1633 "theGovernourand Council met at Boston, 
and called the ministers and elders of all the churches to con- 
sider about Mr. Cotton his sitting down. He was desired to 
divers places, and those who came with him desired he might 
sit down where they might keep store of cattle ; but it was 
agreed, by full consent, that the fittest place for him was 
Boston ; and that (keeping a lecture) he should have some 
maintenance out of the treasury." The fittest place was 
indeed Boston, that appears to have received its name out of 
compliment to him, — while he was yet preaching at Boston 
in Lincolnshire those doctrines, that brought him into 
question with the high commission court, and compelled 
him to fly for his safety, disguised and under a feigned 
name, to these ends of the earth. He was accounted the 
ablest man on this side of the sea, and his lecture rose 
at once into an object of deep and general concern. On 
the very first month of its establishment an order of 



court was passed, prescribing the hour at which it should 
be attended, one o'clock in the afternoon.* The order, 
however, could not have remained long in force, and midday 
became the time, when this important service, by which the 
magistrates were instructed and the churches advised and 
the people warned, was performed. Its influence was felt in 
the conferences of ecclesiastics, and at the council board of 
state. It exerted its various power upon the customs and 
even the dress of that generation, upon the order of disci- 
pline, the tenets of faith, and the laws of the land. Such 
was the well known efficiency of our Lecture while it was yet 
young in its work, addressing itself to a community, that was 
growing indeed, but still thin and scattered. 

And here, before proceeding to any account of its further 
celebrity and spread, I will ask you to stop for a moment, 
and look behind the facts that have been already mentioned 
and are generally understood, to consider a circumstance 
even earlier than any that has been named ; one that is on 
every account worthy to be mentioned in this connexion, and 
the rather as it wears an air of novelty. The Thursday 
Lecture does not only carry us back to the days of the first 
settlement of the country, but to the native land of our fore- 
fathers. It is connected with the old world, as well as with 
old times. It was preached in the English Boston by the 
same fervent ministry that brought it to ours. We can follow 
it from the fens of the Witham to the New England coast. 
The grandson of Mr. Cottonf assures us, that his famous 



* Snow's History of Boston, p. 54, note. 
t Mather's Magnalia, vol. ii. p. 238. 



ancestor kept "his ordinary Lecture every Thursday," 
while he was under the directions of the Bishop of Lincoln, 
and in friendship with the noble Earl of the same title. 
One cannot but be struck with the thought, that the eloquent 
voice might have been heard many and many a time rolling 
among the stately Gothic arches of St. Butolph's, which came 
here to fill a poor meetinghouse, having nothing better than 
mud for its walls and straw for its roof; and that under one of 
the loftiest cathedral towers in Europe, lifting itself up as the 
pride of the surrounding country, and a landmark to them 
that are afar off on the sea, this very institution had its origin, 
which has long shown not even the vestiges of Jts ancient 
renown, but is dying under our eyes and hands a lingering 
death. I imagine it not only associating the present with 
a remote age, but bringing together the opposite shores of 
the Atlantic Ocean. I hear the heavy bell calling John 
Cotton's hearers together in prelatical England ; and the 
knell falls faintly around me of the intervening generations 
that have gone away one after another into silence. 

In returning from this digression, which some may think 
full imaginary enough, to the history of the beginnings of the 
Lecture among ourselves, the next fact that meets us is one 
that does not partake at all of the fanciful. It is the sub- 
stantial reality of a market, set up now for the first time in 
this place. On the 4th of March, 1634, as Governor Win- 
throp informs us, " By order of court a mercate was erected 
at Boston, to be kept upon Thursday the 5th day of the week, 
being the lecture day." And shortly afterwards he adds, 
that " at the lecture at Boston, a question was propounded 



8 



about veils. Mr. Cotton concluded, that where (by the cus- 
tom of the place) they were not a sign of the women's sub- 
jection, they were not commanded by the apostle. Mr. En- 
dicott opposed, and did maintain it by the general arguments 
brought by the apostle. After some debate, the Governor, 
perceiving it to grow to some earnestness, interposed, and so 
it brake off." It is curious to compare these two mementos, 
laid so closely together ; the solid provision for the public 
convenience, and the flimsy discussion on female attire between 
the austerest of governors, — for a governor was disputant as 
well as umpire, — and the gravest of divines. Both indicate 
the character of the time ; its deficiency in what seems to us 
indispensable, and its zealousness on what seems to us indif- 
ferent. They could neither of them be passed over in 
the sketch which is now presenting ; for there is but one 
more circumstance of similar antiquity to be mentioned. It 
is furnished by the imprinted records of this church, and 
relates in the most illegible of hands a fact of which it is im- 
possible to mistake the interpretation ; that some excommu- 
nicated person, whose name I will not be the first to disturb 
in its long sleep, was compelled to confess among other mis- 
demeanors, his U sometimes forsaking the Lecture " for the 
sake of indulging in his vices ; — a simple allusion, but one 
that shows distinctly enough the reverence in which the ser- 
vice thus " forsaken" was held. 

Here then we may consider the first era of it to be com- 
pleted ; and a few words will describe the aspect which it 
now wore. It was a meeting of all that claimed or deserved 
respect in the neighborhood. The magistrates were pres- 
ent, the Governor of the colony with his counsellors ; and 



<) 



after its appropriate offices were ended, it was followed by a 
convention of the people, at which municipal regulations were 
adopted, and questions of every kind were discussed that 
engaged the minds of the men of that day. " Whatever 
Mr. Cotton delivered," says an historian,* " was soon put 
into an order of court, if of a civil, or set up as a practice in 
the church, if of an ecclesiastical concernment." 

The curtain of nearly half a century now drops before the 
scene. We see nothing and hear nothing behind it. It was the 
period, when the Lecture was steadily advancing to its highest 
point of show and popularity, and yet precisely that which 
has left the least account of itself; like the true prosperities 
and well filled power, that love best to go on their way 
with a rejoicing quietness. I will but lift the screen, and 
exhibit to you as on a stage or in a picture the appearance 
that it presented during this period. The thatched meeting- 
house has disappeared and given place to a more commodi- 
ous and worthy structure ; and towards this, on every fifth 
morning of the week, there is a flowing together of the 
people from many a mile round. The villages send their 
yeomen and pastors. The walls of Harvard College, that 
have risen at Newtown, contribute of its few students and 
fellows to swell the train. All other instruction must cease, 
while the lips of the benignant old patriarch Wilson, of the 
eloquent and commanding Cotton, of the zealous Norton, of 
Oxenbridge the well beloved, who broke off his own preach- 
ing of this very Lecture to be carried to his death-bed, are 



* Hubbard. 



10 



dispensing diviner knowledge. The schools dismiss their 
pupils in the forenoon, and are kept no more that day, in 
order that no one may be deprived of so great a privilege. 
The rough weather of a climate yet sterner than it has since 
been, scarcely thins the assembly that comes to warm itself 
with fervent words and the glow of a common interest and 
the breath of its own crowd, in a cold place. What an array 
is here of dignity, and sanctity, and comeliness ! What squares 
of scarlet cloaks ! What borders of white but artificial hair ! 
What living complexions, — of a less shining whiteness, and 
less presumptuously red, — upon many fair but solemn faces, 
which the arguments of Cotton have divested of their veils ! 
And lest any thing should be wanting to so important an occa- 
sion, and lest a single interesting association of life should be 
overlooked or unconnected with it, I hear the list of names 
repeated with a loud voice, of those who " intend," as the 
good phrase still is, to make themselves the happiest of mor- 
tals. Thus the recreations of the young and the meditations 
of the old, the order of the churches and the guidance of the 
state, the market-place and the marriage-ring, have their re- 
membrances bound together in this ancient service. 

In the year 1679 it sustained an alteration, of too much 
consequence to be here passed by. The church of Boston 
was no longer one. The thickening population at the North 
required another edifice for their accommodation, which had 
already existed for thirty years ; and religious dissensions, — 
a less happy and a less honorable motive, — had planted, 
somewhat violently, a third church at the South. Hitherto, 
the Lecture had been conducted by the pastors and teachers 
of the old congregation. But feebler hands than their pre- 



11 



decessors were now bearing up its ark. The great names of 
the former time had become names and recollections merely ; 
and the question necessarily arose, whether there might not 
be some enlargement of the present practice. The question 
did arise ; — but in a shape that we should hardly have looked 
for. A singular record is found at this date in the books ot 
the First Church. It seems that there was passed " an order 
and advice of y e magistrates, y' all the elders of this towne 
might joyntly carry on the 5 lh day lecture." An order from 
the magistrates ! And Cotton but a single generation in his 
grave ! Where was the old bond of alliance, between him 
who spoke from the sacred desk and him who sat in the 
state chair ? One would think that in that age of visions his 
angry spirit would have passed before their faces, making all 
their " bones to shake." The times had changed however, 
though a portion of their temper, in opposition at least, was 
still remaining. The reply was expressed in the following 
vote : " In answer to y e Hon ed Magistrates about the Lecture ; 
Tho as an injunction wee cannot concurr with it, but doe 
humbly bare our witnesse against it, as apprehending it tend- 
ing to y e infringement of Church Libertie : yett if the Lord 
incline the hearts of the other Teaching officers of this towne 
to accept of desire of our officers, to give y r assistance with 
those of this Church, who shall bee desired to carry on their 
fifth day lecture, wee are willing to accept theire help therein." 
It was nobly said ; — with a proper respect for themselves, 
and a reasonable jealousy of political interference with relig- 
ious offices. One can only lament, that with all the mixture 
of human feelings, there can be the slightest pretence to sus- 
pect them of any but the best. One can wish to forget that 



12 



they were yet unreconciled, though after a quarrel that had 
lasted as long as the siege of Troy, with their seceding breth- 
ren of the Old South ; who had from the beginning the best 
of the argument, and manifested throughout, perhaps, the 
better temper. But whatever our judgment may be, — and it 
should certainly not do them a wrong and dishonor, — the 
event was, that from that time forth, other ministers, as they 
were added to the Congregational name, bore their part in 
these exercises, and many new gifts and powers were brought 
in to aid in a venerable work. 

There is now another interval of blankness for twenty 
years, and when we look again the scene is changed. "The 
world hasteth fast to pass away," says an apocryphal writer ;* 
and how could the Thursday Lecture enjoy its immunities 
for ever ? We see it declining now from its high ascendency, 
though still preserving a certain dignity in its waning and its 
descent. Towards the close of the century, Dr. Cotton 
Matherf "gave notice that the Lecture was to begin at 11 
o'clock instead of 12; reproved the town's-people that at- 
tended no better ; and declared that it would be an omen of 
their not enjoying it long, if they did not amend." Our se- 
vere weather began now to act as a preventive or to patron- 
ize an excuse. In the mid winter of 17 J 5, during a violent 
snow-storm from the northeast, the worshippers not only 
could be counted, but offered by their unprecedented fewness 
a temptation to count them ; — and a Chief Justice assures us 



* 2 Esdras, iv. 26. 

t Chief Justice Sewall's MS. Journal. 



13 



that the audience, barricaded as it might have been by the 
driving tempest before the services should have exhausted 
themselves, consisted but of sixteen women and two hundred 
men. 

We may well pause, after such an instance of deterioration, 
and unwilling to pursue any further the course of neglect, 
take refuge in a great public event, which sixty years after- 
wards shook the whole land, and ended in throwing over our 
withered Lecture a momentary glory ; — as the frost paints the 
dying leaves of the woods with more magnificent colors 
than when they flourished the freshest. During the siege of 
Boston, it was for a few melancholy months suspended ; and 
the deliverance of the town renewed it in the midst of uni- 
versal acclamations. Individuals may be yet alive who beheld 
its crowded assembly that day ; — a day that was suited to 
remind men of the foundation of the colony, while celebrating 
its redemption and freedom, — that saw one great era looking 
back to another, and battle and victory stretching out their 
mailed hands to greet all the ancient memories of peril and 
destitution and " small " but unconquerable " things." The 
officers of the army of Congress gave their attendance, throw- 
ing a military splendor over the house of prayer ; and there 
was Washington himself, that " Captain of the Lord's host " 
for a continent and for mankind. 

The Lecture might have closed its doors after this. It had 
had enough of honor. I will add nothing further to its his- 
tory. The rest is told by our own recollections of the wise 
and good and eloquent, who have cast their words upon its 
deserted walfe ; and whose voices — O, how gladly would we 
bring back, though it were but for a moment, from the 
lonelier chambers into which they have died away '• 



14 



" A spirit passed before my face." — Let me return to the 
text, and end the discourse as it was begun. The spirit in 
the book of Job did not disappear till it had uttered its short 
word of admonition : " Shall mortal man be more just than 
God ? " The spirit which we have ventured to accost may- 
have something else to tell besides its story of accidents and 
changes. Before it is swallowed up in the shadows of the 
night, from which we have summoned it, let us listen to 
its advice. It says to us, — Have no regrets for what cannot 
be called back. Make no complaints concerning what could 
not be otherwise. Utter no lamentations over the decay of 
observances, that cannot for ever be observed j nor over the 
decay of piety, as if it were indicated and expressed by any 
thing of this kind that is done or left undone. " Strengthen 
the things that remain," and that you would not willingly let 
die ; but lay it not to heart too much, if you find that you 
cannot reverse the decree of their mortality. Do not mis- 
trust the present. Do not tremble for the future. The world 
that has been changing hitherto, will change more. Forms 
will give place to forms; opinions will grow obsolete, 
usages be laid aside, and establishments fall ; but truth will 
gain, and improvement go on, and religion, that immortal one, 
healed of its hurts and released from its thralls, draw freer 
and freer breath. Reflect, that the institutions which have 
become less used have become less required. A multitude 
of means, new and full of life, spring forward into the place 
of every one, which age has impaired or circumstances have 
dispensed with. Rejoice, that whatever is lost by the wear- 
ing out of a single instrument, is made up a hundred fold by 
other facilities. Rejoice, that individual influence and au- 



15 



thority have become less, that the strength of an enlightened 
public sense might become more. The most famous of all 
your divines* professed that " he loved not to sleep, till he 
had sweetened his mouth with a piece of Calvin." But that 
taste has altered. Some of you, like the fire-kings, profess 
to savour the drug, while it is only a cunning substitute that 
you swallow in its stead ; and others plainly say, that such 
sugar of lead was fit only for the palates of an iron genera- 
tion. Be instructed in lessons of humility, thankfulness, 
hope, by the shade of the past. Mourn for nothing. 
Despair of nothing. Be persevering and be content. 
"Shall mortal man be more just" than time and destiny, 
and the God who is over both ? 



* Mather's Magnalia, vol. ii p. 250. 



PSALM CVII. 

[From the New-England Version.] 
Tone : St. Martin s. 

Your thanks unto the Lord express, 

Because that good is he, 
Because his loving kindnesses 

Last to eternity. 

So say the Lord's redeem'd, whom bought, 
He hath from enemies' hands; 

And from the east and west hath brought 
From south and northern lands. 

Then did they to Jehovah cry, 

When they were in distress, 
Who did them set at liberty 

Out of their anguishes. 

O that men praise Jehovah would, 

For his great goodness then ; 
And for his wonders manifold 

Unto the sons of men. 



ORIGINAL HYMN. 

Tune : Eaton. 

Like Israel's host to exile driven, 
Across the flood the Pilgrims fled ; 

Their hands bore up the Ark of Heaven, 
And Heaven their trusting footsteps led, 

Till on these savage shores they trod, 

And won the wilderness for God. 

Then, where then* weary Ark found rest, 

Another Zion proudly grew ; 
In more than Judah's glory drest, 

With light that Israel never knew. 
From sea to sea her empire spread, 
Her temple Heaven, and Christ her head. 

Then let the grateful Church to-day 
Its ancient Rite with gladness keep ; 

And still our Fathers' God display 

His kindness, though the fathers sleep. 

O bless, as Thou hast blest the past, 

While earth, and time, and heaven, shall last. 






